From mboxrd@z Thu Jan 1 00:00:00 1970 Received: from cthulhu.engr.sgi.com (cthulhu.engr.sgi.com [192.26.80.2]) by neteng.engr.sgi.com (980427.SGI.8.8.8/970903.SGI.AUTOCF) via ESMTP id MAA44380 for ; Tue, 24 Nov 1998 12:34:34 -0800 (PST) Return-Path: Received: (from majordomo-owner@localhost) by cthulhu.engr.sgi.com (980427.SGI.8.8.8/970903.SGI.AUTOCF) id MAA34757 for linux-list; Tue, 24 Nov 1998 12:33:49 -0800 (PST) mail_from (owner-linux@relay.engr.sgi.com) Received: from oz.engr.sgi.com (oz.engr.sgi.com [150.166.42.13]) by cthulhu.engr.sgi.com (980427.SGI.8.8.8/970903.SGI.AUTOCF) via ESMTP id MAA02995; Tue, 24 Nov 1998 12:33:46 -0800 (PST) mail_from (ariel@oz.engr.sgi.com) Received: (from ariel@localhost) by oz.engr.sgi.com (980427.SGI.8.8.8/970903.SGI.AUTOCF) id MAA31902; Tue, 24 Nov 1998 12:33:45 -0800 (PST) From: ariel@oz.engr.sgi.com (Ariel Faigon) Message-Id: <199811242033.MAA31902@oz.engr.sgi.com> Subject: Re: help offered To: torbjorn.gannholm@fra.se (Torbjörn Gannholm) Date: Tue, 24 Nov 1998 12:33:45 -0800 (PST) Cc: linux@cthulhu.engr.sgi.com In-Reply-To: <365AA647.62A5565D@fra.se> from "Torbjörn Gannholm" at Nov 24, 98 01:27:53 pm Reply-To: ariel@cthulhu.engr.sgi.com (Ariel Faigon) Organization: Silicon Graphics Inc. X-Mailer: ELM [version 2.4 PL25] MIME-Version: 1.0 Content-Type: text/plain; charset=US-ASCII Content-Transfer-Encoding: 7bit Sender: owner-linux@cthulhu.engr.sgi.com Precedence: bulk : :First my apologies for asking questions you all know the answer to: :What kind of SGI-machines does Linux currently work on? : Only Indys. :In what areas does IRIX6.5 have a significant edge over Linux :performancewise? : - Scalability: up to 256 CPUs - Guaranteed Real Time response (kernel is preemptible i.e. you can have multiple system calls executing in server space simultaneously. - A real journalling filesystem (XFS). Reboot doesn't require a lenghty 'fsck'. Even if you have a terabyte filesystem the filesystem check takes one second or so. - Bandwidth (I/O networking) e.g. 4 GB/sec write to RAID disks. Linux has a clear edge is latency (as opposed to bandwidth) short system call paths, simplicity and a general speed advantage almost accros the board on machines with a single CPU, small disks, small files etc. Note that Linux doesn't even support big files (more than 4 GB) on x86, while IRIX supports many terabyte files. :We really want to put Linux on _everything_ we've got, from PI's to :O2000 (we might also keep a PowerSeries380 for fun), as well as on suns :and pcs. It would make everything a lot simpler to administrate, plus if :we're not happy we can try to hack something. : Me too. This is not easy to do. It is a big work. :If necessary for performance, we can keep IRIX on the numbercrunchers, :and, if that's not a performance problem, use gcc/egcs and glibc. Same :questions for these contra Irix Development Kit as above. : :I have my employer's blessing to put time into porting and/or :development of Linux/gcc/glibc for SGI-machines if someone just points :me in the right direction. :I have solid programming experience, I have dabbled a bit in sysadmin :and am a quick learner (I have at times written useful code in unknown :languages from examples), but haven't been this deep in before. : If you could make 'glibc' run on IRIX and send me the details of what you did (and patches to the maintainers) that would be a great great thing. It will make most freeware programs more portable between IRIX and Linux. -- Peace, Ariel